Bi-Weekly IIHE Internal Seminar: Krijn de Vries, "Modeling radio emission form particle cascades: From air to ice"

Tuesday 24 Sept 2013, 11:00 → 11:30 Europe/Brussels

Large Seminar Room (Universe)

Radio emission of cosmic-ray-induced particle cascades in air, so-called air showers, has come to a flight last decade. The latest results at LOFAR and the Pierre Auger Observatory (AERA) show that radio-detection can be used as a complementary method to the main air-shower detection techniques. Next to the air-shower detection experiments several new experiments (ARA, ANITA, NuMoon) were developed to detect high energy (>EeV) neutrino induced particle cascades in dense media such as ice, salt, and moon rock. At the highest energies, these neutrino's are extremely rare and a large detector volume is needed to detect them. Due to the long attenuation length of the signal, radio is the most promising tool to detect these rare events. Along with these experimental efforts, several theoretical models were developed, most of them describing the radio emission from air showers. One of these models, the EVA-model, will be discussed. The main properties of the radio signal are discussed as well as the emission mechanisms. It will be shown that Cherenkov effects are crucial in the emission. In the following, I will focus on the extension of the EVA-model to describe radio emission from particle cascades in ice which is currently under development.